Equal
by you're my Star
Summary: He wasn’t fooled by the ribbons in her hair or her fragile looking fingers, he knew from the start that she wasn’t afraid to get her dress dirty. [Draco & Pansy]


**disclaimer: **i don't own. i don't profit. and you need something better to do if you're going to try and sue.

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He has only ever known her for who she is.

While many have known her for the house she's in, what she's said, or even who she's been with, he knows better. They met when they were five years old, and even then, he couldn't see her for anything other than the things she really was. He wasn't fooled by the ribbons in her hair or her fragile looking fingers, he knew from the start that she wasn't afraid to get her dress dirty.

She was never very adventurous on her own, but whenever he'd lead them on a dangerous mission, she'd follow without question.

She's always managed to impress him when he's least expected it. She notices things about people that others do not, and she knows exactly how to use these things against them. When Millicent was making remarks about her new haircut, Pansy stood up straight and made remarks about the notoriously violent girl's weight. Draco had watched this scene unfold with mild interest, absolutely surprised that Pansy, half the size and a quarter of the weight of Millicent, was able to intimidate the other girl.

The event just further proved to him how strong and unpredictable she was. Always had been.

He knows her well enough by now to know that she is not without flaws, she is riddled with them. And the fact that she shows them off has often left him raging mad and irritable. But no matter how angry she makes him, he's always guaranteed to go back to her, it's how he's programmed, it's part of the routine.

He's found that he knows more about her than he wants to (and certainly more than _she _wants him to). Sometimes she's conforming, and it's his least favorite thing about her, it's bloody difficult to find her in a crowd. She's _different _than the rest of the run-of-the-mill people polluting the world, and he wishes she showed that on the outside instead of hiding it.

She's emotional. He learned it the hard way the first couple of times he made her cry, or yell, or even laugh. Her laugh may be his favorite part about her, whenever he is able to coax so much as a chuckle from her, he finds himself happy, it fills him with a pride that he cannot get from evoking anger in those around him, it comforts him to know that he is capable of making people feel something other than pain or disappointment.

He may love her laugh but he hates it when she cries. Whenever she cries, her eyes swell up and she won't look him in the eye, she always looks as though she is a dog that has just been kicked. She's one of the very few people out there that he figures doesn't deserve a good kicking.

He's spent more time with her than he has with anyone else outside his family.

In the summer, he'd sometimes show up at her house for dinner. Their families were always too busy to eat dinner with them, and they'd found that the company of each other was far better than the company of empty chairs and house elves. She'd eat her meal in silence, and when she was finished, she'd lick her fingers and look at him guiltily from under her eyelashes as though she'd done something wrong. But they both knew she hadn't, etiquette may have mattered at fancy dinner parties, but not with each other. They were raised to be proper and polite, but no one has ever stopped them from forgetting the rules behind closed doors.

They were both cold and callus to those around them, he had never considered many people to be his "equal". But if anyone matched him, it was her.

Many have never known her as more than a pug-faced girl, or a fowl-mouthed teenager. He has only ever known her for who she is.

He knows everything about her. To him, she is a lot more than just Pansy Parkinson.

And that, perhaps, is why he regrets not having said goodbye to her. Why he misses her as he sits with Snape in the dark on this piercingly cold night. Why he wishes that he and Pansy were children again, that she still wore ribbons in her hair and he still wore innocence on his face, and that they were alone, lost in a whirlwind of their fantastic adventures, with each other forever, without the rest of the world to interfere.

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**fin**

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**a/n: **oh my gooodness! deathly hallows is in like two days. and i've gone like two or three months without posting any dp. sorry about that. :( haha, i'm sure you didn't miss me that much if you even noticed i was gone. this will probobly be my last post-deathly hallows story (which is sad! and makes me really nostalgic!), so happy reading to everyone! **are you excited for the book? sad? nostalgic (like me!)? tell me in a review!** **feel free to ramble about it**, i'd love to hear anything you've got to say. (and i also wouldn't mind if you told me what you thought of this fic ... ) thank you for reading! 


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